Subject: Genre, Game name(no need to mention that it is foss in the title, everything here is)

Content:

What is the project?You can mention history, motivation, philosophy, features and plans of the project but don't overdo it ;), complete 'about' text, feature list and roadmap should be on the project site. Oh, and link to them! :)

Mention what developers or contributors are wantedSpecific tasks should be described in a project page/TODO file, link to it! :)

Please can you be very accurate about what you mean by "open source"? Some websites can refuse a game whose source code is open source if the art assets aren't under a "free" license too, some other websites refuse a game whose name is a registered trademark, some other websites can refuse a game whose source code is under if its art assets are under a free sharing license preventing commercial use and/or forcing the mention of the attribution (right of paternity).

gouessej {l Wrote}:Please can you be very accurate about what you mean by "open source"? Some websites can refuse a game whose source code is open source if the art assets aren't under a "free" license too, some other websites refuse a game whose name is a registered trademark, some other websites can refuse a game whose source code is under if its art assets are under a free sharing license preventing commercial use and/or forcing the mention of the attribution (right of paternity).

I don't know specifically for FreeGameDev, but I can give some insights about common definitions of what is free and what is not, from my experience in packaging for Mageia (which follows the same licensing policy as Fedora).

At Mageia we consider free (for inclusion in our "core" repository) content that is either copyleft or public domain, and that respects the fundamental free software freedoms.As an exemple, CC-BY-SA is completely free for us, since you can redistribute it, modify it and so on, but the NC clause would make it nonfree, because then people would not be able to e.g. sell computers with Mageia on it (that might be a bad example, I'm not an expert of the application of the NC clause).

Now from what I've seen on this forum, 100% FLOSS games are of course very welcome, but you can also speak about free game engines that require nonfree content, such as cdogs-sdl. But yes generically speaking it's free as in free speech

I'm under Mageia Linux 3 at home, I know what you're talking about, I'm not surprised by your explanation. I just noticed that some moderators may have a slightly different interpretation of the terms "open source" and "free", that's why I asked this question.

gouessej {l Wrote}:I'm under Mageia Linux 3 at home, I know what you're talking about, I'm not surprised by your explanation. I just noticed that some moderators may have a slightly different interpretation of the terms "open source" and "free", that's why I asked this question.

Great to have a fellow Mageian here!

I've not been here for long either, so hopefully a maintainer will point you to the proper forum guidelines, and/or improve them to be more account if need be.

gouessej {l Wrote}:Please can you be very accurate about what you mean by "open source"? Some websites can refuse a game whose source code is open source if the art assets aren't under a "free" license too, some other websites refuse a game whose name is a registered trademark, some other websites can refuse a game whose source code is under if its art assets are under a free sharing license preventing commercial use and/or forcing the mention of the attribution (right of paternity).

AFAIK, we are not super strict about it as we are not doing package management for a Linux distribution or something like that. Anything that has source-code that falls under this: http://opensource.org/docs/osd or the Free Software definition by the FSF is definitely fine. Borderline cases like for example stuff based on the FreeSpace2 source code would probably not get deleted, but someone will point out that this isn't true open-source software. Same goes for trademark or based on copyrighted characters etc. stuff (depending on the character of those post someone might decide to move it to "off-topic" however).

Non-"Free" art assets are accepted but also depreciated, and there seems to be a general agreement in this community that all should be "Free" which includes commercial use.

tl;dr: There is no strict rule, nor is there need for one.

P.S.: Projects based on closed source commercial engines (even if their script code is some sort of open-source) will usually get deleted as there is no point discussing them here.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete” - Buckminster Fuller

Julius {l Wrote}:AFAIK, we are not super strict about it as we are not doing package management for a Linux distribution or something like that. Anything that has source-code that falls under this: http://opensource.org/docs/osd or the Free Software definition by the FSF is definitely fine.

Ok, my source code is still and will remain under GPL.

Julius {l Wrote}:Borderline cases like for example stuff based on the FreeSpace2 source code would probably not get deleted, but someone will point out that this isn't true open-source software.

I'm curious, please can you explain what is "wrong" with FreeSpace2 source code?

Julius {l Wrote}:Same goes for trademark or based on copyrighted characters etc. stuff (depending on the character of those post someone might decide to move it to "off-topic" however).

I don't infringe copyrights, I don't intentionally use protected materials without the prior consent of copyright owners even though I'm not a supporter of copyright and I don't intentionally use copyrighted materials in my game. In my mother tongue, the synonym of this word rather means "author's right", it sounds better for me but it is already something different of the traditional American copyright notion. When I use a registered trademark in an option or in a text, I try to find a place to mention the owner of this trademark. The long title of my game is my trademark, Mozilla Firefox is almost in the same situation except that it is a registered trademark. When you talk about trademark and copyright, do you talk about games that may use one of them illegally? (which isn't my case)

Julius {l Wrote}:Non-"Free" art assets are accepted but also depreciated, and there seems to be a general agreement in this community that all should be "Free" which includes commercial use.

tl;dr: There is no strict rule, nor is there need for one.

Personally, as I said in some threads, I don't want to earn money from my game. Its development has costed me about 3000 €, I don't want anybody to earn even a penny with it, I don't want my game to be mixed with ads (especially ads for Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Google, Monsanto, Bouygues, Mediaset, Lagardère, Dassault, ...). I disagree with the way most games are sold nowadays, especially those with DRMs, freemium/F2P games with ads and/or silly features designed just to encourage the players to pay. On my view, "selling" a software like an apple, like something material, is weird and requires technical protections that are dangerous for the Internet and computer science, for our rights. That's why I defend the collectivist cooperative global patronage. I understand that in the meantime some developers and artists have to live from gaming or at least make some money but my main concern is this further: if someboby doesn't care about how I fund my project, if he doesn't want to respect my rights, if he just wants to use my stuff for free without mentioning the attribution, I should have a legal mean to say "no, thanks". If the economic system provided a viable and fair mechanism to ensure that the "digital" creations are democratically funded, I would just use GPL + CC BY-SA.

Julius {l Wrote}:P.S.: Projects based on closed source commercial engines (even if their script code is some sort of open-source) will usually get deleted as there is no point discussing them here.